Oliver Goldsmith Quotes

Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies.

I learn several great truths; as that it is impossible to see into the ways of futurity, that punishment always attends the villain, that love is the fond soother of the human breast.

Is it that Nature, attentive to the preservation of mankind, increases our wishes to live, while she lessens our enjoyments, and as she robs the senses of every pleasure, equips imag-ination in the spoil?

All the bloomy flush of life is fled.

In two opposite opinions, if one be perfectly reasonable, the other can't be perfectly right.

The world is like a vast sea: mankind like a vessel sailing on its tempestuous bosom. ... [T]he sciences serve us for oars.

A book may be very amusing with numerous errors, or it may be very dull without a single absurdity.

That virtue which requires to be ever guarded is scarce worth the sentinel.

Where wealth and freedom reign contentment fails, And honour sinks where commerce long prevails.

Whichever way we look the prospect is disagreeable. Behind, we have left pleasures we shall never enjoy, and therefore regret; and before, we see pleasures which we languish to possess, and are consequently uneasy till we possess them.

Fortune is ever seen accompanying industry.

Thus love is the most easy and agreeable, and gratitude the most humiliating, affection of the mind. We never reflect on the man we love without exulting in our choice, while he who has bound us to him by benefits alone rises to our ideas as a person to whom we have in some measure forfeited our freedom.

Wisdom makes a slow defense against trouble, though a sure one in the end.

Religion does what philosophy could never do; it shows the equal dealings of Heaven to the happy and the unhappy, and levels all human enjoyments to nearly the same standard. It gives to both rich and poor the same happiness hereafter, and equal hopes to aspire after it.

The greatest object in the universe, says a certain philosopher, is a good man struggling with adversity; yet there is still a greater, which is the good man who comes to relieve it.

But winter lingering chills the lap of May.

The man recovered of the bite, The dog it was that died.

Politics resemble religion; attempting to divest either of ceremony is the most certain mode of bringing either into contempt.

I fancy the character of a poet is in every country the same,--fond of enjoying the present, careless of the future; his conversation that of a man of sense, his actions those of a fool.

Fear guides more than gratitude.

This same philosophy is a good horse in the stable, but an arrant jade on a journey.

A kind and gentle heart he had, To comfort friends and foes; The naked every day he clad When he put on his clothes.

The premises being thus settled, I proceed to observe that the concatenation of self-existence, proceeding in a reciprocal duplicate ratio, naturally produces a problematical dialogism, which in some measure proves that the essence of spirituality may be referred to the second predicable.

I have known a German Prince with more titles than subjects, and a Spanish nobleman with more names than shirts.

There is a greatness in being generous, and there is only simple justice in satisfying creditors. Generosity is the part of the soul raised above the vulgar.

As for murmurs, mother, we grumble a little now and then, to be sure; but there's no love lost between us.

With disadvantages enough to bring him to humility, a Scotsman is one of the proudest things alive.

Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.

We may affirm of Mr. Buffon, that which has been said of the chemists of old; though he may have failed in attaining his principal aim, of establishing a theory, yet he has brought together such a multitude of facts relative to the history of the earth, and the nature of its fossil productions, that curiosity finds ample compensation, even while it feels the want of conviction.

Who, born for the universe, narrow'd his mind, And to party gave up what was meant for mankind; Though fraught with all learning, yet straining his throat To persuade Tommy Townshend to lend him a vote. Who too deep for his hearers still went on refining, And thought of convincing while they thought of dining: Though equal to all things, for all things unfit; Too nice for a statesman, too proud for a wit.

And his best riches, ignorance of wealth.

A silent address is the genuine eloquence of sincerity.

Politeness is the result of good sense and good nature.

Hope is such a bait, it covers any hook.

Philosophy ... should not pretend to increase our present stock, but make us economists of what we are possessed of.

Logicians have but ill defined As rational the human mind; Reason, they say, belongs to man, But let them prove it if they can.

The folly of others is ever most ridiculous to those who are themselves most foolish.

Crime generally punishes itself.

If we do not find happiness in the present moment, in what shall we find it?

Silence is become his mother tongue.

Let schoolmasters puzzle their brain, With grammar, and nonsense, and learning, Good liquor, I stoutly maintain, Gives genius a better discerning.

The loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind.

The ambitious are forever followed by adulation for they receive the most pleasure from flattery.

If you were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like whales.

We had no revolutions to fear, nor fatigues to undergo; all our adventures were by the fireside, and all our migrations from the blue bed to the brown.

So the loud torrent, and the whirlwind's roar, But bind him to his native mountains more.

Aromatic plants bestow no spicy fragrance while they grow; but crush'd or trodden to the ground, diffuse their balmy sweets around.

A flattering painter, who made it his care To draw men as they ought to be, not as they are.